The Curry Chefs Of Brick Lane
This is the ideal moment for a hot curry to warm the spirits, so I set out with photographer Jeremy Freedman to make the acquaintance of some of Brick Lane’s most celebrated Curry Chefs. We were privileged to be granted admission to the modest kitchens tucked away at the back or in the basement of the curry houses, where Head Chefs marshal whole teams of underchefs in a highly formalised hierarchy of responsibility.
It was a relief to step from the cold street into the heat of the kitchens, where we discovered our excited subjects glistening with perspiration, all engaged in the midst of the collective drama that results in curry. We found that these were men who – for the most part – had worked their way up over many years from humble kitchen porters to enjoy their heroic leading roles, granting them the right to a degree of swagger in front of the lense.
We encountered the charismatic Zulen Ahmed, pictured above, standing over his clay-lined tandoori oven beneath the Saffron restaurant where he has been Head Chef for ten years now. Trained by the renowned Curry Chef, Ashik Miah, Zulen served eight years as a porter before ascending to run his own kitchen, now supervising a team consisting of two chefs who do the spicing and make the sauces, a tandoori chef, two cooks who cook rice and poppadums, a second chef who prepares side dishes and a porter who does the washing up. “The Head Chef listens to everybody,” he explained deferentially, with his staff standing around within earshot, and thereby revealing himself to be a natural leader.
Across the road at Masala, we met Head Chef, Shaiz Uddin, whose mother is a chef in Bangladesh. She taught him to cook when he was ten years old. Shaiz told me he worked in her kitchen as Curry Chef for seven years, before he came to London ten years ago to bring the authentic style to Brick Lane, where today he is known for his constant invention in contriving new dishes for his eager customers.
It was quickly apparent that there is a daily routine common to all the curry kitchens of Brick Lane. At eleven each morning, the chefs come in and work until three to prepare the sauces and half cook the meat for the evening. At three they take a break until six, while the underchefs, who arrive at three, prepare the vegetables and salad. Then at six, when the chefs return, the rice is cooked and – now the kitchen is full – everyone works as a team until midnight, when it is time to throw out the leftovers and make the orders for the next day. This is the pattern that rules the lives of all involved. “I like to be busy,” Nurul Alam, Head Chef at Preem & Prithi, informed me blithely – he regularly cooks three hundred curries a night.
“When I started, I dreamed of being a chef,” confessed Jamal Uddin, Head Chef at Bengal Cuisine, referring to his ambition when he came here to Brick Lane from Bangladesh aged nineteen. For the last fourteen years, Jamal has reigned supreme in his kitchen with a Tandoori Chef, a Cook and a Porter working under his supervision as he prepares as many as two hundred curries every day. “I love cooking,” he admitted to me as his gleaming face broke into a smile, though whether it was the intensity of his emotion or the humidity in the kitchen that was the cause of his glowing complexion, I never ascertained.
Syed Jahan Mir, Head Chef at Chillies Restaurant, told me he came to this country at the age of eighteen with his mother and father. Syed was able to learn from his father who was also a chef and they started out together at first, working side by side in the same restaurant. “He’s better than me, but now he is retired to Sunderland I am the best!” Syed asserted, placing a hand on his chest protectively. “Of course I like it,” he confirmed for me with fierce pride, “Twenty-four years, I’ve been doing this, just making curry – it’s my profession.” A poet with spices, Syed creates his own personal mixture for curry. “It’s all the blending,” he emphasised, running his fingers through the golden powder in a steel dish to demonstrate its special properties.
Mohammed Salik still remembers arriving in Britain at the age of seven. “It was quaint and nice here and the people so good, not overcrowded and dirty like my country,” he recalled with a sublime smile of reminiscence, “My dad used to work at the Savoy, but I wanted to be part of the community here in Brick Lane.” Starting as kitchen porter, Mohammed spent the first five years watching and learning and is now Head Chef at Eastern Eye Restaurant. Our brief conversation in the kitchen was eclipsed by the arrival of a bucket on a piece of string from the restaurant above and inside was a yellow slip of paper, occasioning a polite, apologetic glance from Syed as he turned away to study the handwriting and order his team to work, making up the order.
At Cinnamon, Head Chef and veteran of twenty-five years in the business, Daras Miya was keen to introduce me to the two smiley, hardworking young Kitchen Porters under his care, skinny twenty-four year old Belal Ahmed who has been there three months and also works as a waiter, and nineteen year old Mizanor Rahman who started a week ago. Newly married and with little English, wide-eyed Mizanor was experiencing his first winter in London, after marrying his wife who came from Britain to Bangladesh find a husband.
Finally, at the Aladin we met Brick Lane’s most senior Curry Chef, the distinguished Rana Miah who started work in 1980 as a kitchen porter when he arrived from Bangladesh, graduating to chef in 1988. “At that time we served only Bengalis, but by 1995 the customers were all Europeans,” he recalled, describing his tenure as chef at one of Brick Lane’s oldest curry houses, which opened in 1985 and is second only to the Clifton in age. Rana explained that he runs his kitchen upon the system of “Handy Cooking,” based around the use of large stock pots to cook the food. “That’s the way it’s done in Bangladesh,” he confirmed, “This is a traditional restaurant.” As the longest serving Curry Chef, Rana gets frequent consultations from the other chefs on Brick Lane and, remains passionate about his vocation, arriving before everyone each day and leaving after everyone else too.
We never asked the Curry Chefs to cross their arms, but they all assumed this stance, independently and without prompting. It is a posture that proposes professionalism, dignity and self-respect, yet it also indicates a certain reticence, a reserved nature that prefers to let the culinary creations speak for themselves. So I ask you to spare a thought for these proud Curry Chefs, working away like those engineers slaving below deck on the great steam ships of old, they are the unseen and unsung heroes of Brick Lane’s Curry Mile.
Abdul Ahad Forhad, Curry Chef at Monsoon, 78 Brick Lane – “I’m the master of curry!”
Head Chef Shaiz Uddin with his colleague Monul Uddin, Tandoori Chef at Masala, 88 Brick Lane
Nurul Alam, Head Chef at Preem & Prithi, 124/6 Brick Lane, cooks three hundred curries a night
Abdul Tahid, Head Chef at Papadoms, 94 Brick Lane
Jamal Uddin, Head Chef at Bengal Cuisine, 12 Brick Lane
Syed Jahan Mir, Head Chef at Chillies Restaurant, 76 Brick Lane
Mohammed Salik, Head Chef at Eastern Eye Balti House, 63a Brick Lane
Daras Miya, Head Chef at Cinnamon, 134 Brick Lane
Belal Ahmed & Mizanur Rahman, porters at Cinnamon 134, Brick Lane
Rana Miah, Brick Lane’s longest serving Curry Chef stands centre, flanked by Kholilur Rahman and Mizanur Khan in the kitchen of the Aladin, 132 Brick Lane
Photographs copyright © Jeremy Freedman
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A Bloomsbury Jamboree
In gleeful collaboration with Tim Mainstone of Mainstone Press and Joe Pearson of Design for Today, I am organising a BLOOMSBURY JAMBOREE, as a one-day festival of books and print, illustration, talks and seasonal merriment on SUNDAY 8th DECEMBER from 11am until 5pm.
It takes place at the magnificent ART WORKERS GUILD, 6 Queens Sq, WC1, which was founded in 1884 by members of the Arts & Crafts movement including William Morris and C R Ashbee. These oak panelled rooms lined with oil paintings in a beautiful old house in Bloomsbury offer the ideal venue to celebrate our books, and the authors and artists who create them.
There will be book-signings and a programme of ticketed lectures, as well as live music and entertainment for all ages, plus we have invited twenty friends to exhibit, including print and paper makers, small press publishers, toy makers, bee keepers, potters and craft workers.
Genius inventor Tim Hunkin will be bestowing instant beatifications for the festive season – King of the Bottletops, Robson Cezar, has made fifty bottle top crowns for parties and celebrations – favourite illustrators Alice Pattullo and Paul Bommer will be selling their prints – silhouette cutter, Matyas Selmeczi will be doing free portraits – New Dawn Traders will be offering olive oil and other produce from small farmers in Portugal imported by sail power – Caroline Bousfield of Victoria Park Village will be displaying her own pottery, and Tessa Hunkin of Hackney Mosaic Project will bring small mosaics for purchase.
All our Spitalfields Life Books titles will be in stock and there will be opportunities to meet Eleanor Crow, Adam Dant, Doreen Fletcher, Suresh Singh, Julian Woodford and The Gentle Author who will be signing and inscribing copies of their books.
Art Workers Guild
Art Workers Guild
Art Workers Guild
Click here for a talk on JOHN MINTON’S COMMERCIAL ART by Martin Salisbury at noon
Click here for a talk on MEMOIRS OF A COCKNEY SIKH by Suresh Singh at 1pm
Click here for a talk on JOHN PIPER’S BRIGHTON AQUATINTS by Alan Powers at 1pm
Click here for a talk on SHOPFRONTS OF LONDON by Eleanor Crow at 2pm
Click for a talk on ERIC RAVILIOUS’ LOST PICTURE PUFFIN by Joe Pearson at 2pm
Click here for a talk on GHASTLY FACADISM in London by The Gentle Author at 3pm
Click here for a talk on MAPS OF LONDON & BEYOND by Adam Dant at 3pm
Click here for a DARKTOWN QUIZ by Jonny Hannah at 4pm
Genius Inventor, Tim Hunkin in his workshop
King of the Bottletops wearing one of his bottletop crowns (Photograph by Sarah Ainslie)
Illustrator Alice Pattullo
Silhouette Cutter Matyas Selmeczi (Photograph by Colin O’Brien)
New Dawn Traders import produce to London from small farmers in Portugal by sail power
Caroline Bousfield makes pots in Victoria Park Village
Tessa Hunkin & Hackney Mosaic Project
David Kira Ltd, Banana Merchants
To anyone that knows Spitalfields, David Kira Ltd is a familiar landmark at 1 Fournier St next to The Ten Bells. Here, at the premises of the market’s foremost banana merchant – even though the business left nearly thirty years ago – the name of David Kira still stands upon the fascia to commemorate the family endeavour which operated on this site for over half a century.
This is a story of bananas and it began with Sam Kira in Southend, a Jewish immigrant from Poland who became naturalized in 1929 and started a company called “El Dorado Bananas.” Ten years later, his son opened up in Fournier St as a wholesaler, taking a lease from Lady Fox but having to leave the business almost at once when the war came, bringing conscription and wiping out the banana trade. Yet after the war, he built up the name of David Kira, creating a reputation that is still remembered fondly in Spitalfields and, since the shop remains, it feels as if the banana merchants only just left.
“When I first came to the market as a child of seven, we lived in Stoke Newington and took the 647 trolley bus to Bishopsgate and walked down Brushfield St. Every opportunity, I came down to enjoy the action and the atmosphere, and the biggest thrill was getting up early in the morning – I always remember being sent round to the Market Cafe to get mugs of tea for all the staff. When I joined my father David in 1962, aged sixteen, my grandfather Sam had died many years earlier. There was me and my father, John Neil (who had been with my father his entire working life), Ted Witt our cashier, two porters, Alf Lee and Billy Alloway (known as Billy the thief) and we had an empty boy. Our customers were High St greengrocers and market fruit traders, and we prided ourselves on only selling the best quality produce. Perhaps this was why we had a lot of customers. It was hard work and long working hours, getting up at half past four every morning to be at the market by five thirty. I used to sleep for a couple of hours in the afternoon when I got home, until about six, then I’d get up and return to bed at eleven until four thirty – I did that six days a week.
We received our shipments direct from Jamaica through the London Docks – bananas in their green state on long stalks – they arrived packed in straw on a lorry and it was very important that they be unloaded as soon as they arrived, whatever time of day or night the ship docked, because the enemy of the banana is the cold. They were passed by hand through a hatch in the floor to the ripening rooms downstairs – it took five days from arrival until they were saleable. Since the bananas came from the tropics, it was not so much the heat you had to recreate as the humidity. We had a single gas flame in the corner of each ripening room, the green bananas hung close together on hooks from the ceiling and, when the flame was turned down, a little ethylene gas was released before the door was sealed. Once they were ripened, they had to be boxed. You stood with a stalk of bananas held between your legs and struck off each bunch with a knife, placing it in a special box, three foot by one foot – a twenty-eight pound banana box.
During the sixties, dates were only sold at Christmas but in the seventies when the Bangladeshi people arrived, we started getting requests for dates during Ramadan. I contacted one of the dates suppliers and I asked him to send me thirty cases, and they were sold to Bengali greengrocers in Brick Lane before they even touched the floor. Subsequently, we sold as many dates as we could get hold of, more even than at Christmas. During this period, we also saw the decline of the High St greengrocers due to the supermarkets, however we found we were able to compensate for the loss of trade by fulfilling the requirements of the Asian community.
Eventually, they started importing pre-boxed bananas in the eighties, so our working practices changed and the banana ripening rooms became obsolete. My late father would be turning in his grave if he knew that bananas are now placed in cold storage, which means they will quickly turn black once they get home.
In 1991, when the market moved, we were offered a place in the new market hall but trading hours became a free-for-all and, although we started opening at three am, we were among the last to open. By then I was married and had children, and without the help of my father and John Neil who had both retired, I found it very difficult to cope. It was detrimental to my health – so, after a year, I sold the company as a going concern. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but by chance I bumped into a colleague who worked in insurance and he introduced me to his manager. I realised in that type of business I could continue to be self-employed, so I trained and qualified and I have done that for the past twenty years. When I think back to the market, I only got two weeks a year holiday and I felt guilty even to put that pressure on my father and John Neil when I was away.”
Proud of his father’s achievement as a banana merchant, Stuart delighted to tell me of Ethel, the rat-catching cat – named after the ethylene gas – who loved to sleep in the warmth of the banana ripening rooms and of Billy Alloway’s tip of sixpence that he nailed to the wall in derision, which stayed there as his memorial even after he died. Stuart cherishes his memory of his time in the market, recognising it as a world with a culture of its own as much as it was a place of commerce. Today, the banana trade has gone from Spitalfields where once it was a way of life, now only the name of David Kira – heroic banana merchant – survives to remind us.
Sam Kira (far right) dealing in bananas in London and Southend.
Sam Kira’s naturalization papers.
David Kira at the Spitalfields Fruit Exchange – he is centre right in the fifth row, wearing glasses and speaking with his colleague.
The banana trade ceased during World War II.
David Kira as a young banana merchant
David Kira (left) with his son Stuart and business partner John Neil
David Kira and staff
Stuart Kira in the doorway of his former office of twenty years, where his father and grandfather traded for over fifty years
David Kira Ltd, 1991
First and last pictures copyright © Mark Jackson & Huw Davies, 1991
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Jimmy Huddart, Spitalfields Market Porter
Peter Thomas, Fruit & Vegetable Supplier
Ivor Robins, Fruit & Vegetable Purveyor
John Olney, Donovan Brothers Ltd
Jim Heppel, New Spitalfields Market
Blackie, the Last Spitalfields Market Cat
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The Forgotten Corners Of Old London
Who knows what you might find lurking in the forgotten corners of old London? Like this lonely old waxwork of Charles II who once adorned a side aisle of Westminster Abbey, peering out through a haze of graffiti engraved upon his pane by mischievous tourists with diamond rings.
As one with a pathological devotion to walking through London’s side-streets and byways, seeking to avoid the main roads wherever possible, these glass slides of the forgotten corners of London – used long ago by the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society for magic lantern shows at the Bishopsgate Institute – hold a special appeal for me. I have elaborate routes across the city which permit me to walk from one side to the other exclusively by way of the back streets and I discover all manner of delights neglected by those who solely inhabit the broad thoroughfares.
And so it is with many of these extraordinary pictures that show us the things which usually nobody bothers to photograph. There are a lot of glass slides of the exterior of Buckingham Palace in the collection but, personally, I am much more interested in the roof space above Richard III’s palace of Crosby Hall that once stood in Bishopsgate, and in the unlikely paraphernalia which accumulated in the crypt of the Carmelite Monastery or the Cow Shed at the Tower of London, a hundred years ago. These pictures satisfy my perverse curiosity to visit the spaces closed off to visitors at historic buildings, in preference to seeing the public rooms.
Within these forgotten corners, there are always further mysteries to be explored. I wonder who pitched a teepee in the undergrowth next to the moat at Fulham Palace in 1920. I wonder if that is a cannon or a chimney pot abandoned in the crypt at the Carmelite monastery. I wonder why that man had a bucket, a piece of string and a plank inside the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral. I wonder what those fat books were next to the stove in the Worshipful Company of Apothecaries’ shop. I wonder who was pulling that girl out of the photograph in Woolwich Gardens. I wonder who put that dish in the roof of Crosby Hall. I wonder why Charles II had no legs. The pictures set me wondering.
It is what we cannot know that endows these photographs with such poignancy. Like errant pieces from lost jigsaws, they inspire us to imagine the full picture that we shall never be party to.
Tiltyard Gate, Eltham Palace, c. 1930
Refuse collecting at London Zoo, c. 1910
Passage in Highgate, c. 1910
Westminster Dust Carts, c. 1910
The Jewel Tower, Westminster, 1921
Fifteenth century brickwork at Charterhouse Wash House, c1910
Middle Temple Lane, c. 1910
Carmelite monastery crypt, c. 1910
The Moat at Fulham Palace, c. 1920
Clifford’s Inn, c. 1910
Top of inner dome at St Paul’s Cathedral, c. 1920
Apothecaries’ Hall Quadrangle, c. 1920
Worshipful Company of Apothecaries’ Shop, c.1920
Unidentified destroyed building near St Paul’s, c. 1940
Merchant Taylors’ Hall, c. 1920
Crouch End Old Baptist Chapel, c. 1900
Woolwich Gardens, c. 1910
The roof of Crosby Hall, Richard III’s palace in Bishopsgate , c. 1910
Refreshment stall in St James’ Park, c. 1910
River Wandle at Wandsworth, c. 1920
Corridor at Battersea Rise House, c. 1900
Tram emerging from the Kingsway Tunnel, c. 1920
Between the interior and exterior domes at St Paul’s Cathedral, c. 1920
Fossilised tree trunk on Tooting Common, c. 1920
St Dunstan-in-the-East, 1911
Cow shed at the Queen’s House, Tower of London, c. 1910
Boundary marks for St Benet Gracechurch, St Andrew Hubbard and St Dionis Backchurch in Talbot Court, c. 1910
Lincoln’s Inn gateway seen from Old Hall, c. 1910
St Bride’s Fleet St, c. 1920
Glass slides courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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Pomegranates At Leila’s Shop
Now is the season for pomegranates. All over the East End, I have spotted them gleaming in enticing piles upon barrows and Leila’s Shop in Calvert Avenue has a particularly magnificent display of glossy red Spanish ones. Only a few years ago, these fruit were unfamiliar in this country and I do remember the first time I bought a pomegranate and set it on a shelf, just to admire it.
My father used to tell me that you could eat a pomegranate with a pin, which was an entirely mysterious notion. Yet it was not of any consequence, because I did not intend to eat my pomegranate but simply enjoy its intriguing architectural form, reminiscent of a mosque or the onion dome of an orthodox church and topped with a crown as a flourish. This was an exotic fruit that evoked another world, ancient and far away.
As months passed, my pomegranate upon the shelf would dry out and wither, becoming hard and leathery as it shrank and shrivelled like the carcass of a dead creature. A couple of times, I even ventured eating one when my rations were getting low and I was hungry for novelty. It was always a disappointing experience, tearing at the skin haphazardly and struggling to separate the fruit from the pithy fibre. Eventually, I stopped buying pomegranates, content to admire them from afar and satiate my appetite for autumn fruit by munching my way through crates of apples.
Then Leila McAlister showed me the traditional method to cut and eat a pomegranate – and thus a shameful gap in my education was filled, bringing these alluring fruit to fore of my consciousness again. It is a simple yet ingenious technique of three steps. First, you cut a circle through the skin around the top of the fruit and lever it off. This reveals the lines that naturally divide the inner fruit into segments, like those of an orange. Secondly, you make between four and eight vertical cuts following these lines. Thirdly, you prise the fruit open, like some magic box or ornate medieval casket, to reveal the glistening trove of rubies inside, attached to segments radiating like the rays of a star.
Once this simple exercise is achieved, it is easy to remove the yellow pith and eat the tangy fruit that is appealingly sharp and sweet at the same time, with a compelling strong aftertaste. All these years, I admired the architecture of pomegranates without fully appreciating the beauty of the structure that is within. Looking at the pomegranate displayed thus, I can imagine how you might choose to eat it one jewel at a time with a pin. It made me wonder where my father should have acquired this curious idea about a fruit which was rare in this country in his time and then I recalled that he had spent World War II in the Middle East as a youthful recruit, sent there from Devon at the age of nineteen.
Looking at the fruit opened, I realised I was seeing something he had seen on his travels so many years ago and now, more than ten years after he died, I was seeing it for the first time. How magical this fruit must have seemed to him when he was so young and far away from home for the first time. They call the pomegranate ‘the fruit of the dead’ and, in Greek mythology, Persephone was condemned to the underworld because of the pomegranate seeds that she ate yet, paradoxically, it was the fabled pomegranate which brought my youthful father back to me when he had almost slipped from my mind.
Now, thanks to this elegant method, I can enjoy pomegranates each year at this time and think of him.
“its intriguing architectural form, reminiscent of a mosque or the onion dome of an orthodox church and topped with a crown as a flourish”
First slice off the top, by running a sharp knife around the fruit, cutting through the skin and then levering off the lid.
Secondly, make radiating vertical cuts through the skin following the divisions visible within the fruit – between four and eight cuts.
Thirdly, split open the pomegranate to create a shape like a flower and peel away the pith.
Leila’s Shop, 15-17 Calvert Avenue, London E2 7JP
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Vegetable Bags from Leila’s Shop
A Photograph of Jeremiah Donovan
Even five years after I published Horace Warner’s Spitalfields Nippers, new stories continue to appear about the subjects of these astonishing portraits taken in Quaker St around 1900
Jerry Donovan or ‘Dick Whittington & His Cat’
JEREMIAH DONOVAN was born in 1895 in the City of London. His parents Daniel, a news vendor, and Katherine Donovan lived at 14 Little Pearl St, Spitalfields. By 1901, the family were resident at Elizabeth Buildings, Boleyn Rd. In 1919, Jeremiah married Susan Nichols and they had one son, Bertram John Donovan, born in 1920.
I have always admired Horace Warner’s portrait of Jeremiah Donovan, not least because I know how hard it is to get a cat to look into the lens and it must have been especially difficult with a long exposure.
When we researched the lives of the Spitalfields Nippers, we were surprised by the range of outcomes. In spite of their modest beginnings, you could not generalise about their adult lives. We could not help becoming emotionally invested in their stories and were overjoyed when new facts came to light or living relatives got in touch. The brief biography above is all that we managed to discover about Jeremiah Donovan at that time.
You can imagine my delight when his granddaughter, Irene, contacted me recently with fond memories of Jeremiah – who she remembered as a quiet man. She was only thirteen he died and had never seen Horace Warner’s photograph until now. Sometimes people speculate whether Jeremiah was blind but she was able to dispel this notion, both he and his cat were simply photographed wincing into the sun.
There is a poignant quality to an account of an adult life when read while studying a picture of the child. Horace Warner’s portrait is a precious photograph because it is a rare piece of historical evidence of the Irish in the East End.
My response to Irene’s story is one of relief that Jeremiah Donovan lived until 1956 and died at the age of sixty-one – since around a third of the children in Horace Warner’s photographs did not reach adulthood. How fortunate he was to survive World War I and return and have a family.
Once you know the biography, his photograph becomes curiously emblematic. Jeremiah’s affinity with animals and his weak chest were to stay with him throughout his life
What I love about the stories of the Spitalfields Nippers is that they bridge the remote world of nineteenth century Spitalfields with our own present day.
JEREMIAH DONOVAN, my grandfather, by Irene Dean (Donovan)
‘His parents Daniel and Kathleen originated in Ireland, they came to England and settled in Spitalfields. He had two sisters, Kathleen and Bridget, and a brother, James, known as ‘Jimmy.’ He could have had more siblings but I do not recall any others being mentioned.
Jerry volunteered for World War I in 1914 when he was nineteen and was stationed at first at City of London Barracks in Moorgate. He joined the Royal Artillery and was gassed in France. As I child, I remember he always suffered with his chest.
The only photograph I ever recall seeing of him was as a very young man in his pill box hat and uniform with braid across the front. He told me that he looked after the horses for the gun carriages. After the war, I believe he worked in a cigarette factory on Kingsland Rd.
In the twenties, he lived with my grandmother – who I never met until after he died – in Kenning Terrace near Hoxton Market. The reason I did not meet her – Susan but known to us as ‘Betty’ until later was that she left Jerry when my dad was six years old and he was fostered by another family during the week while Jerry was at work.
My dad did not like the name of Bertram and was always known as ‘Jack.’ He was born in Kenning Terrace in 1920. My mum was also born in Hoxton in 1920 and they grew up together. She came from a family of eleven and my dad was best friends with her brother Joe, so he was always at her house.
My grandad was very good to my mum during World War II when my dad was away in the Eighth Army in North Africa and Italy. He made sure that my mum and I had what we needed if he could, so I grew up very close to him in place of my father.
My first memories are from when I was five, staying with my grandfather for weekends when he lived in Cowper Rd, Stoke Newington. Later I visited him in Boleyn Rd with my mother and sister, but by then he was very sick man – almost bed-bound.
At this funeral in 1956, there was only my dad, mum and me, together with his partner of many years, Emma – who disappeared days after the funeral and was never heard of again.
I think Jerry would be proud to know, after only having one child, that he has nine great-grandchildren who all doing well and flourishing. Many of whom have graduated from university.”
Click here to buy a copy of Spitalfields Nippers for £20
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An Astonishing Photographic Discovery
The Wax Sellers Of Wentworth St
Franceskka Abimbola, Franceskka Fabrics
On a rainy Sunday in Spitalfields when everything is grey, I wend my way to Wentworth St to visit the African textile stores, that glow like multicoloured lanterns illuminated in the dusk – where a troupe of magnificent women preside, each one a shining goddess in her own universe. A radiance which photographer Jeremy Freedman celebrates in his exuberant portraits.
Sunday is when it all happens in Wentworth St, when customers coming from as far as away as Aberdeen and the Netherlands converge to savour its wonders as the international destination for the best Holland Wax, French Lace, Swiss Voile and Headties to be found anywhere.
Weaving through the Petticoat Lane Market and pausing in the drizzle to gaze into the shop windows, you will spy the fine ladies of Wentworth St holding court in their shops to the assembled throng, simultaneously displaying the wit of matriarchs, the authority of monarchs and the glamour of movie-stars, and all dressed up to show off the potential of their textiles. Identified upon the fascias by their first names, as Franceskka Fabrics, Tayo Fashions & Textiles, and Fola Textile, many of these women put themselves forward personally as bold trendsetters, designing their own fabrics, defining the fashion and styling their customers too. In this, the oldest part of Spitalfields, the textile industry which has defined this neighbourhood for centuries is alive and thriving today thanks to the talents of these shrewd businesswomen of Wentworth St.
Franceskka Abimbola, whose business is the longest established here, welcomed me into her kaleidoscopic shop with mirrored ceiling and walls draped in lush fabrics, just as there was a brief lull in the mid-afternoon trade. “In the late eighties, I came here from Edinburgh to Petticoat Lane to buy this fabric and I found the dealers didn’t wear it and didn’t understand it,” she explained with a humorous frown, “I spoke to Solomon at Renee’s who introduced me to his supplier. So then I wanted to be the first African woman to open a shop, and I used to buy it and sell it from the back of a car. But when I spoke to the supplier about opening my own place, he said, ‘You want to open a shop and start selling my fabrics? I’m going to break you into pieces!'”
Undeterred, Franceskka bravely opened her shop in the Kingsland Rd – at a respectable distance – and, fourteen years ago, she was one of the very first to open in Wentworth St, thus initiating this extraordinary phenomenon where now every other shop here sells Wax, all fiercely competing with their own styles and prices. Thankfully, Franceskka is still in one piece and, in reward for her courage, she is a big success.
“Lots of Nigerian women came at first to buy and ask advice,” she revealed delightedly, “but then women from Gambia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe and Ghana came too. Many didn’t know how to tie the headtie so I teach them how to do it.” With an unassuming relaxed presence, Franceskka, who has a Post Graduate Diploma in Business Studies, controls her international business empire from this tiny shop, extending to two more in Lagos and a third in Abuja. “I go to the fabric exhibitions in Paris and Spain to get inspiration, I design the fabrics myself and get them manufactured in Switzerland. The French Laces are in vogue at the moment and they are very expensive, but if it’s for a wedding people will go all out to look beautiful,” she said, with a delicate smile and lift of her brow, merely hinting at the razzle-dazzle on offer.
Banke Adetoro at Royal Fashions incarnates the notion of sassy with her extravagant eyelashes, constantly fluttering like butterflies. “There’s nothing you want that you can’t get here,” she informed me with an amused gesture of unqualified authority, when I dropped in, “I get all the latest stuff. I can do as many as twenty buying trips in a year. My shop is the biggest and the most beautiful!” You really need to visit this shop to experience the vast phantasmagoria of patterns on display.
By contrast, across the road at Tayo Fashions & Textiles, I met the alluring Tayo herself in her modestly-sized shop. “My mother used to do this back in Africa, and I picked it up,” she confided to me quietly, “I just started trading at home and through the church, and then I started in a small shop with a little help from the bank. Now I have a shop in Lagos too and I go three times a year.” Outlining the convenient balance between the trade in both continents, “At Christmas it’s busy there when it’s quiet here, and it’s busy here in the Summer when it’s quiet there,” she said. Tayo’s two sons help her out in the shop and I was fascinated that in every single shop I visited these women had their children present. In fact, most had come into it through their families and some already had their children working with them, and I found it an interesting contrast to the perceived dilemma between children and career that many European women face.
Betwixt the fabulous fabric shops in Wentworth St are those selling the accessories to complete the outfit, the gleaming metallic pointy shoes and matching bags in multiple colourways and, of course, the jewellery. My favourite is Beauty Stones, lined entirely with coral necklaces that cascade like a waterfall down the walls to create an environment enraptured like a magic cave in a fairy tale. “In the beginning of African culture, anyone that wears it will be honoured,” declared Onome, the gentle custodian of the coral, “In Africa, we believe it is more precious than gold but, in this market, I have realised that lots of people are in love with it too.” Standing proud, Onome who is a celebrant in her own tribe, gestured to the coral that surrounded her, feeling its benign presence. “It’s my mother’s business,” she continued fondly,”but when she died ten years ago I couldn’t let the business die too.” And today the business is lively, since Onome’s nine children work in the shop (two were adopted after her sister’s death) and, as we spoke, happy little children ran around our legs playing with strings of corals beads they were threading. “It’s really is lovely to look at – sometimes when I put my hand on a bead, it tells me what to do, how to make the necklace,” Onome admitted, clasping a string of coral in her hand, “and the children are very good at the beads too, it’s in the family.”
Speaking with the Wax sellers of Wentworth St, who taught me the Yoruba concept of “Aso- Ebi” – using co-ordinated textiles at a social gathering to express the inter-relationships of all the people there – I realised that these shops contain an entire cultural universe with its own sophisticated language spoken in the vocabulary of textiles. Fashion exists here but, more than this, each decision taken, both in the choice and combination of fabrics makes a personal statement, which gives every single outfit a vibrant poetry all of its own.
Sheba Eferoghene, Novo Fashions
Tayo Oladele, Tayo Fashions & Textiles
Onome Efebeh-Atano, Beauty Stones
Josephine Yokessa, Beauty Solutions
Tayo Raheem, Royal Fashions
Fola Mustapha, Fola Textile
Honey, Honey Textiles
Bola Ilori AKA Madame Boltex, Boltex Textiles
Veronica Ogunmola, Monique Texiles
Tayo Oladele, Tayo Fashions & Textiles
Benke Adetoro, Benke Fashions
Monique Azenabor, Monique Textiles
Franca Aina, Vina Textiles
Photographs copyright © Jeremy Freedman
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